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OCAU News |
Sunday Afternoon
(4 Comments)
(link) Sunday, 12-June-2011 15:42:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It's probably about time I mentioned Bitcoin on the news page. I haven't really gotten my head around it entirely yet, but in short, it's a peer-to-peer currency system. Unlike other digital currencies, Bitcoin avoids central authorities and issuers. Bitcoin uses a distributed database spread across nodes of a peer-to-peer network to journal transactions, and uses digital signatures and proof-of-work to provide basic security functions, such as ensuring that bitcoins can be spent only once per owner and only by the person who owns them. Some people think it's a really big deal. Once OCAU members discovered there's a distributed computing project involved, it became quite a hot topic here, too. But some people feel there's a certain shadiness to the whole thing and it's not really certain how much bitcoins will continue to be worth in terms of real-world money, or even how to exchange them for it. I guess if it really takes off, you won't have to.
There's an Australian Regional Photography Competition running at the moment. The Department of Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government lunched the MyRegion National Photographic Competition, inviting Australians to submit ‘Images of Australia’ taken over the past year that showcase the people, places, wildlife, landscapes and nature that make their communities unique.
The DS game "Dead or Alive: Dimensions" has had its classification revoked in Australia, essentially banning it until it is re-classified. This game was classified PG (Parental Guidance) on 8 February 2011 with consumer advice ‘mild violence and sexualized gameplay’. Information provided to the Board last week suggested that the game contained content not drawn to the Board’s attention in the original classification application.
Another high-profile hacking has occurred, with UK game developers Codemasters reporting customer details stolen, thanks Jon and Martin. Codemasters - which makes games for consoles including Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii - said hackers had accessed customer names and addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and encrypted passwords. The attack followed a number of similar computer hacks, including two against Sony which saw the data of almost 100 million users stolen. Discussion here.
Here's a funny video about the future of home computing, from 1966. Unlike most videos from the past that speculated on flying cars and robots doing all our chores, this one went for the 'home shopping' angle, bank account unification and a way to send letters electronically all over the world.
On the "ooh, shiny" front, IBM have a graphene-based integrated circuit, Japanese researchers have made holograms you can touch and some NZ geeks have made an augmented reality MicroMachines demo. Augmented Reality Micromachines(ARMM) is a car racing game that let players turn their desks into the race courses. ARMM utilizes Microsoft’s Kinect for table-top reconstruction, Bullet for the physics simulation and Openscenegraph for rendering.
Guru3D went to the headquarters of ECS in Taiwan. We'll show awesome building photos but then quickly move onwards towards the Research and Development department where the good stuff is designed from PCB CAD design stages, the BIOS team and actually research and development.
E3 was on recently in Los Angeles, and LegitReviews have wrap-up coverage and booth babes. TechSpot have a trailer hotlist. One thing everyone's talking about is the new Nintendo Wii U.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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